art smarts

Chapter 2. Artist Profiles

Gord Paynter

"Regardless of whether you’re a comic or you enjoy working with watercolours or you’re a musician or you like dance, if it’s in you, you are automatically doing it. You don’t really have the option of holding back. Otherwise, you’re suppressing this sort of natural urge. That’s what it is as much as anything with me – it’s this natural desire to make people laugh. I take any opportunity to make people laugh, whether it’s a bank teller, a waitress or a cabbie. It’s a constant game and challenge."

Gord has been working as a professional comic since he got his first regular gig at Yuk Yuk’s in Toronto, in 1984. When he began to lose his eyesight as a result of diabetes at the age of twenty-two, he thought he would never be able to have a career as a comedian, something he’d wanted since he was a child. But Gord started telling a lot of “blind jokes” to his friends, who encouraged him to enter comedy contests. He did, performing at coffee houses until he caught on at Yuk Yuk’s.

In 1985, Gord helped found the Rolling Thunder Theatre Company in Brantford, made up of able-bodied and disabled actors. Gord left the company after a year to go back to comedy, but he was still interested in the education work that Rolling Thunder had been doing. This was the inspiration for developing his motivational show, Leave ‘Em Laffin’, in 1987. Gord uses his own story as an inspiration to others to pursue what they truly want.

As well as regular appearances on the North American comedy club circuit, Gord has received international newspaper and radio coverage and been featured at Montreal’s Just for Laughs Comedy Festival, as well as on CBC’s Fifth Estate and The Nature of Things, and talk shows including Open Mike with Mike Bullard and The Late Show.

“I still enjoy doing stand-up comedy, particularly in the nightclub circuit, because that’s a different venue, a different audience, and you’re absolutely free to say and do whatever you want on stage. And that’s kind of a luxury; it’s a beautiful perk. That’s what keeps me going in the business. I like to do it, and I feel so fortunate that I’ve got a job that I love to do. I love traveling and I love meeting people and I love the whole thrill of the show. I also love the word ‘love’!”

James Sanders